3.4 Coalitions

The Mālava princess watched with awe and pride at what she had been able to achieve – almost single-handedly, if you discounted the force that a demand from Cāṇakya had, or the pressure of an apparently unstoppable barbarian invasion at the gates – something that had not been seen even by her great-grandfather in his hundred well-lived years.

A joint assembly between the three great republican confederacies of the Southern Punjab! And nobody had even been murdered yet!

She had gone door to door, in her city as well as in the capitals of the Kśūdrakas and Śivis, begging every representative to agree to show up to the forum, refusing to take no for an answer, coming with every persuasive argument she could, herself playing, mentally, the part of Cāṇakya –

“Great Ārya, whatever you may think of me and my people – you must admit that you would not allow your daughter to spend a day in our city, and yet here I am, taking every risk to my personal safety in travelling to this city that would like nothing more than to see my lifeless bloody body. Despise me all you want – do not dishonour my courage as a kṣatriya woman!”

“So be it, then. If we shall not meet at the forum, we shall meet in the afterlife after having been massacred by the Greeks. Not in heaven, but in hell – for abdicating our duty to our people as kṣatriyas.”

“If none of you come to receive the Kśūdrakas and Śivis at our capital, so be it – I will ask Professor Cāṇakya to host it at the Kśūdraka capital instead, and I will go there alone on behalf of the Mālavas, if even my bodyguards desert me.”

And then painstakingly organized the forum and public security for all attending parties (knowing that some representatives would deliberately arrive without bodyguards, each with the hope that he’d be killed and a war would be sparked with him as a martyr), with key attention to detail to look out for any miscreants and troublemakers seeking to ignite conflict.

Now, with all in order, and Cāṇakya’s address in progress, she hoped she would finally have the time to wipe the sweat off her brow.

Dream on! Reality spat in her face, and perhaps for the first time ever, presented Cāṇakya with his match – a force unconquerable even to the power of his words – the rivalry of the Sauvīra tribes!

“Join hands! Join hands with those barbarous Kśūdrakas and Śivis, who murdered our noble forefathers and forced suicide upon their wives!”

“Join hands! Join hands with the wicked Mālavas, the tyrants who oppressed us for a hundred years, ravaging our lands and seizing our cattle to enrich their own capital city!”

“Join hands! Join hands with the wicked Mālavas and the lowly Śivis—”

“You know,” Cāṇakya interjected forcefully, “I am only asking that you unite in the same fervour against the Greeks that you are against me.”

The courtroom erupted, and she struggled to regain order.

Then she had an idea.

“Professor Cāṇakya,” she pressed in a concerned tone. “Your theories about statecraft may be true in the ideal. But our three countries have a strained history, and some of us see it as tone-deaf, or even offensive, to ask us to simply set this aside, to build bridges without even for a goal of such importance as repelling the Greeks.”

She got some nods in agreement. Cāṇakya eyed her carefully, and she held her breath, hoping he wasn’t annoyed at her.

“Justice can never be applied to tribes, only to individuals,” he said, “And history is never the judge of justice, for both ends of justice: deterrence and restitution, disappear with the passage of time.”

Before anyone else could speak in reply, Puṣkaradhāriṇī herself filled in the part of the opponent.

(in some corner of her mind, she marvelled at the respect and authority she had gained among all three countries – earned of the obvious and genuine effort she had put into this project, with no visible benefit to herself, and surprisingly she had lost no honour from all the grovelling she had done)

“But what of our wounds?” she asked. “Or, on behalf of the Kśūdrakas and Śivis, theirs?”

“A wound is healed with medication and rest, not by yelling in rage at the cause of that wound – and certainly not by suicide, which is what would be the result of not uniting against the Greeks.”

She wanted to cry at him: Please – please just say something these people want to hear!

The crowd erupted in chatter, and this time she cautiously allowed it, to measure the prevailing sentiment.

“And what of our Kṣatriya honour?” cried one at him, “something that you, a Gandhāra, would have no understanding of!”

“Those who forfeit their caste duty for their caste honour,” Cāṇakya replied steadily, “Will be obliged to neither, as they can be assumed to have forfeited their caste itself.”

“And what of our duty toward the dead!”

“Is not to send them company.”

The crowd chattered again, in less hysterical tones this time.

“I believe,” she said at last, interrupting them after a much longer duration this time. “That it is not kṣatriya duty to debate philosophy with Professor Cāṇakya. But I do know, that if we do not swallow our prides and banish hesitation and suspicion from the co-ordination of our efforts, then we will surely have disappointed those very forefathers we claim to fight for, by allowing their lineages to perish from the Earth.”

Her brothers had teased her, for all the work she had put into setting up the forum, that she was truly doing it all out of her adulation of Cāṇakya.

It was completely false, of course. Her adulation of Cāṇakya, of what were already his many accomplishments and obvious future glory, had no influence on her interest in the task, and nor did the fantasy of wedding him. Still, even though none of that had been relevant to her actions, the fact that she was walking by his side, in the liminal lights just past sunset, speaking so freely of strategy and all matters of intrigue, gave her a rush.

“You were weak today,” she said in a light, teasing tone. “You should never make those you are trying to win over feel that you are trying to convince them.”

In the past she would never have had so much as the thought to criticize someone as learned as Cāṇakya on any matter of strategy, but now having done things herself, she no longer felt so disconnected from the “ways things work” – she felt a sense of ability to partake in them herself, to truly learn, to talk with him intelligibly.

Cāṇakya hummed thoughtfully. “Indeed. One rarely persuades his opponent in debate, at least not outside of elite Brāhmaṇa circles. One convinces the undecided audience. And in a spontaneous debate, where you have the freedom to choose how the desired object of persuasion perceives the way in which he is persuaded. So instead, one should act as you did – as the mediator between conflicting sides, appearing to decide at the end, forgoing your apparent neutrality and centrism because some option is so atrocious.”

The princess nodded, somewhat pleased with herself.

Then Cāṇakya smiled. “This is not a thought that escaped me, Mālavika,” he explained. “But not every posture is available to one at every time. I had summoned the forum for an obvious purpose, and any pretence of neutrality would have appeared both disingenuous and weak. So instead I chose the opposite approach: declare a more extreme position than your actual one, or declare your position in a way that elicits outrage, so that all the arguments they develop only pertain to these sources of outrage not central to your position – then you need only to retreat from these things that cause outrage, only to arrange circumstances in a way that makes it possible for them to concede without losing face.”

“But you didn’t,” she pointed out, puzzled, “You didn’t try to help them save face.”

“No,” he admitted. “I left that part to you.”

She couldn’t believe this man. “You just expected me to say the things I did? What if I didn’t!”

“Well, you had shown great competence in arranging the forum beforehand. For a novice, anyway.”

“W— For a NOV—” she regarded him dryly for a moment, and he laughed.

“I always have multiple alternate plans, of course,” he explained. “So that at least one of them is usually successful.”

“So you have been using other princesses as well?” she teased, “How many – one for each country?”

“Princesses, princes, demented old Chandalas … from where I stand, you all look the same to me.”

She laughed. It was often easy to overlook, she thought, with respected men – that this respect was held by other people towards them; they themselves still held the ridiculous boyish playfulness, it did not simply fade with adulthood, and was perhaps in fact even the cause of their competence.

“I must ask, though, Professor,” she continued smoothly, “I know you answered the question in court, but I must ask for your true, uncensored explanation: why is it that you pushed so hard for King Puruṣottama to surrender to the Greeks, yet wish for our three countries to fight them?”

Cāṇakya raised a single eyebrow. “I assume,” he said, smiling a little, “That it was your father who put you up to press me on this?”

She opened her mouth to object, shocked – but then stopped herself. He could have feigned innocence of her intentions and simply given her a suitable answer, but he had instead chosen to take the riskier approach, to build genuine trust – and it would be dishonourable of her to not reciprocate his honesty. So she nodded, her face red, returning in slight his conspiratorial expression.

“It is a fallacy,” he explained, “To conflate military strategy with ideology. There is no ideology that compels you to fight every war, and no ideology that compels you to surrender each time. There is no ideology called aggressiveness, and no ideology called surrender. These are options taken strategically, based on the probability of success and the desirability of each outcome.”

“You did not answer my question,” she pointed out. “What is the difference in goals between the cause of our independence and that of King Puruṣottama’s?”

“There is none,” Cāṇakya answered, confusing her further. “But it is also a fallacy to mistake the battle for the war.”

Puṣkaradhāriṇī’s heart sank to hear such words. She wanted to believe, really wanted to believe, that Cāṇakya’s intents were wholly pure – that all the silly rumours of him in fact being a spy for the Greeks were just that, to suppress that sick instinct she had, that she was just some silly girl being manipulated by him towards some wicked end.

“So it is true,” she said a little spitefully, trying not to harden. “That you have some agenda of your own. That you are not helping us out of generosity alone.”

Cāṇakya’s expression was stern. “To condemn a man merely because he has an agenda is akin to condemning a merchant for making a profit. The progress of the world is derived entirely from men pursuing their agendas, for without an agenda, a man is as aimless a beast. The question, princess, is not if I have an agenda, but if that agenda is good – if it is in alignment with the profit of others.”

In fact, she had herself expressed a very similar view earlier when a courtier had questioned, in conversation with her father, that if Cāṇakya was such a fearsome intellect to face, if it was so frightening that they did not know what his true motives were – why not simply dismiss him? Or: if the fear was that he may then support the enemy, why not just execute him?” To which Puṣkaradhāriṇī had intercepted, masking as best as she could her disgust at especially that latter suggestion, that if one were offered the Pāśupatāstra from Lord Rudra, it would hardly be wise to refuse it on the argument that it is untrustworthy and might backfire – and it would certainly not be wise to destroy something so divine and valuable!

She stopped in her tracks to face him, and putting as much force and emotion into her voice as she could manage, asked: “Cāṇakya, I am not so foolish as to betray you out of the fear of being betrayed. For such is the mistrust that could be sowed by the enemies – this much I have learned from the debates I have attended in my visits to Takṣaśilā … ” —for a second, she realized that she had only really learned this from him, and even that could be a conspiracy of his, to emphasize this possibility in her mind and others’, causing an instinctive flinch away from her instinct to distrust him — why, oh why, could things not just be simple with this man, why couldn’t she just trust him, so she could do as he told without hesitation— “But I am truly, truly afraid that in all this, I might be playing the part of the foolish girl, manipulated into bringing the downfall of her own people. Is there no assurance you can deliver me? Can you not just … tell me your goals?”

Cāṇakya’s eyes were soft, but Puṣkaradhāriṇī could tell from them that he would not give her the security she wished for.

“There is much that I must disclose to you,” he said, “After the war.”

She could feel her pulse in her face.

“After defeating the Greeks?” she asked hopefully.

“After the war.”

The atmosphere in the Uśīnara country was festive as always.

It was rather standard, in the countries of Punjab excluding Takṣaśilā, for people to spontaneously break into dance – as a display of either some joy or machismo, almost as if it were a natural language of the people of the region. And today too, several mass dances had been held across the city, to maintain city spirits, and also to entertain the city’s new Greek visitors.

Drunken roadside brawls had always been commonplace in the city, with either weapons or with bricks, pots and other commercial articles, and today, too, there was an army parade, to the inspection of the Greeks – and Great King Puruṣottama and Great King Alexander had just exchanged wines, and they had complimented each other’s with great gusto.

The residents of Uśīnara could hardly find a difference in the colourful, boisterous city they loved.

The court session was all smiles, of course, for the occasion was a joyous one. Some inattentive courtiers who dozed off were cheerfully awakened by their helpful neighbours, and all spoke highly of the new-formed friendship between Puruṣottama and Alexander, and of the courtly statesmanship that both rulers had displayed in their interactions and in their joint decision to form this alliance.

The gathered courtiers stared inquisitively at their Greek visitors.

“Why does he show his thighs so openly?” whispered one.

“Perhaps the Greeks, being barbarians, have not mastered the art of wrapping garments?” another suggested.

“No, silly, that is an _apsara!” (was another proposition) “But her hair is white – she is surely too old to still be dancing and entertaining us with her skills, but perhaps financial circumstances—”

“Fool! That is not a woman – that is Alexander! The Greeks have white hair even in their youth.”

“That is not true – I have met a Greek before, he did not have such an odd appearance.”

“Indeed – the males among the Greeks cut their hair short – this must be a woman!”

“No, they don’t! If they cut their hair short, how would they survive a blow to the head?”

“Well, obviously, their brains are located in their thighs!”

“But their thighs are exposed too!”

Alexander would have been quite annoyed, if he had understood the language.

“King of Macedon. Autocrat of Greece. Pharaoh of Egypt. King of Persia. Lord of Asia. A greater hero than such as Heracles, a greater conqueror than such as Dionysus and Cyrus, may he reign for longer even than King Minos did – Alexander, son of Zeus!”

Cheers.

Lots of cheers.

The courtroom was full. Bustling, even.

The proceedings of the courtroom were interrupted by the sound of its heavy wooden doors swinging open – a smooth, rolling sound, as the hinges had recently been oiled in invitation to the Greeks – and all heads in the courtroom spun around at the source of the noise, jolted by the sudden influx of ventilation.

“Great King Puruṣottama.”

Standing in the doorway – illuminated only by lightning and distant moonlight – was the silhouette of a young Brāhmaṇa, untied hair and dhoti waving in the warm monsoon winds, and he was identified by the frozen courtiers from that silhouette alone, if not by the furious expression that revealed itself as he strode further.

“Professor Cāṇakya,” the chief minister Viśālākṣa addressed the guest with mixed respect and fear, and acutely aware that this was reflected in his tone.

In one curt gesture, Cāṇakya emptied the courtroom of all the visitors he did not wish to meet at that time – and they gladly and frantically scurried away, abandoning whatever activity it was that they had been doing – and glad that at least the Greeks were not present during this particular window, for they were sure that Cāṇakya would have quite literally consumed them all in the flames of his tongue as Hanuman had in Lanka.

“I suppose,” the Professor commented. “That the people of the Punjab outside of Gandhāra need no cause for celebration.”

“Honoured Professor,” the minister replied, offended, “There is much cause for celebration. Our kingdom’s territory has been doubled under Greek overlordship – why, even Alexander was impressed by the Great King’s bravery—”

Puruṣottama was increasingly embarrassed with each word of Viśālākṣa’s – for he had an objection to each one of them, but could not voice them, either due to complications with preserving his honour, or due to political considerations that restrained his tongue – and he was interrupted by Cāṇakya, who said:

“I am glad to see, Minister, that you are not too upset by your kingdom’s humiliation in battle – or over the lives of your dead soldiers.”

The slight offense that the minister had earlier taken escalated into positive outrage.

“Professor! You cannot possibly fault the king for this loss – Alexander’s army was twice the size of his!”

“Alexander’s army was twice the size of yours, and yet, knowing this, you marched your soldiers to their death! In a battle whose result was known to you from the start – even as you denied this result, in hope of absurd miracles – even as I taught you that hope is not a valid strategy, but a slogan used by pompous fools to manipulate other fools, you played the part of both such fools.

“Your humiliation is not your loss itself – but the foolishness that lead to it. My admonishment is not of your strength, but of your intellect and of your poor valuation of your peoples’ lives and wealth. You may celebrate that Alexander happened to be impressed by your valour and has treated you kindly after defeating you in battle, just as a gambler may celebrate his unlikely win – such tales of winning against the odds make for good tales for plays and poetry, but they are not guides on decision-making.”

Viśālākṣa was silent.

The horrible truth was this: Cāṇakya’s words were not too different in meaning from those he had given in warning before the war, they were only ruder now than before; the Greeks had not acted in any way that would have been out of expectation; yet, his words hit far harder now they had than before. It was as if, to forget the pains of defeat, the Vṛṣṇis had taken to sensual pleasures, and Cāṇakya was the resurgence of that bitterness in the mind that they had attempted to mask.

“Forgive me,” said King Puruṣottama at last. “Forgive me, Professor, for not hearing your advice – for casting doubt on your motives. You did, in fact, tell us so.”

But Cāṇakya held up a hand, and said: “Very well. Those are matters of the past. What matters now is this: what have you learned from this battle? What have either of you learned?”

When both listeners were silent, Cāṇakya continued. “Their formations are exceedingly simple. A phalanx of spearmen, with some cavalry to flank. Yet they possess one great advantage that is almost sufficient to explain their victory over yours. Do you know what this is, Minister?”

The king and minister opened their mouths to make some cliché suggestions – but Cāṇakya ignored them and continued:

“Much of the theory of battle without losses has simply to do with range. This is why swords have advantage over knives; why archery has advantage over swords; and why horse archers have even more advantage. It is why catapults are preferred over siege engines or elephants in tearing down walls.”

“Do you suggest that we switch to spear-centred melee forces?” Viśālākṣa questioned.

But Cāṇakya shook his head. “In the civilized world, we use swords for their flexibility against light infantry – but with people like the Greeks who spend vast resources to recruit primarily heavy infantry, that is ineffective. But it is not the case that the most effective counter-play to a particular weapon is that weapon itself. The question, then, is: what is the optimal counter-weapon to a long spear?”

Despite that he had just earlier chastised them without regard for title or power, the king and minister watched Cāṇakya in silent admiration, as he thought and strategized aloud, something that he almost never did for concern for secrecy (and this should have alarmed them that Cāṇakya had some further hidden agenda behind his actions, but they found themselves overwhelmed by his charisma and persuasiveness).

“Perhaps some kind of defensive mechanism against spearpoint … of course it would be childish to expect an offensive weapon that simply combines the range of long spears with the flexible movements and attack of a sword … Minister!”

“Tell me, Professor.”

“Give me your staff, the royal scale, and a whip.”

“ … ”

“ … ”

“ … ”

A short while later, Puruṣottama found the fabrics of his throne shredded, and Cāṇakya was seated atop it.

“Indeed,” said the Professor, “The flexible nature of a whip allows it an even greater range of motion as a sword of equal weight with equal effort, while maintaining the longitudinal range of a spear or greater. Do you see what I am saying, Minister?”

Two heads shook. The minister asked skeptically: “Do you suggest that we use whips in battle, Professor?”

Cāṇakya looked annoyed. “There is a certain steel produced by the Draviḍas in the Southern extreme of the world,” he said, “Which is known to metallurgists everywhere as the finest in the world. And although this property is not one that is of common use at present, this steel can be expertly molded to form flexible blades in the shape of whips.”

“What do you want of us, Professor?” asked the king.

“I request your permission to build a wing of the University of Takṣaśilā in your kingdom,” Cāṇakya announced to a shocked duo audience. “To teach the manufacture and use of this type of sword. Alexander will be suspicious if Takṣaśilā were to start expanding its military so soon – but for you, Puruṣottama, with your vanquished army, it is only natural for you to begin rebuilding your army—”

“Professor—”

“—What we need, King, is a fighting force that is unfamiliar to the Greeks, and therefore cannot be exploited by them, and we must build that fighting force under their very noses. Your country is the natural choice for this.”

“You wish for me to enter into an alliance with Gandhāra?” asked the king, “To forget the traitorous past of your people, the descendants of the wicked Śakuni, their spineless submission to the Persians for centuries!”

“Yes.”

Puruṣottama considered this proposal with deep suspicion. He did not consider himself a grudgeful man who would allow petty enmities to compromise grander goals, like the preservation of the culture of the Āryas and the Vedic way from Greek incursions – never in his stable reign had he made a decision contrary to the honour and well-being of his people.

Yet, an alliance with Takṣaśilā was precisely what Alexander had been coercing him into, and Cāṇakya’s insistence on an identical agenda on opposite grounds – under the argument that it would weaken the Greeks – was a cause for distrust, a cause to believe that this might be a ploy by Alexander, either to force him to do his bidding, or to test his loyalty, or both. There was cause to resist changes for their own sake – and that cause was to avoid being manipulated into the destruction of one’s own self and line, one’s elements of sovereignty, as Professor Cāṇakya might have called it.

And yet the fruit offered by Cāṇakya – even as the offer was unspoken – was too sweet to refuse so simply.

(The king did not announce the decision until an animated back-and-forth with the minister, during which Cāṇakya sat patiently on the Uśīnara throne.)

“Very well, Professor,” announced Puruṣottama, “I will admit the alliance under some acceptable terms. But I have one condition.”

“Do tell, Great King.”

“I have a daughter, Yaśomatī, who has attained marriageable age—”

“—certainly, I could arrange for her marriage to the crown prince of Takṣaśilā—”

“No, Professor,” Puruṣottama politely interjected. “I wish to give her in marriage, to you.”

“There is grave news from Śaśigupta,” said the messenger, immediately seizing Alexander’s attention.

After defeating the Aśvakāyanas, the tribe of Queen Kṛpā, who controlled the strategic fort of Avarana – and her ally Prince Sanjaya, who controlled the great city of Puṣkalāvatī, Alexander had appointed Śaśigupta there as satrap, for he had demonstrated his overwhelming efficacy previously in Bāhlīka, reducing local rebellious chiefs and disruptive tribes there and restoring order.

With his army heavily wounded after the battle with King Puruṣottama, the last thing Alexander wanted to hear was bad news from a country that controlled his only supply line back to the West, right when he needed to call in reinforcements.

“What is it?” he asked.

“He reports that his country, and indeed the entire region of the Indian Caucasus, has been attacked by a certain Ghṛtācī, the sister of Kṛpā, and his people have rebelled in her favour. O King of Kings … Nicanor has been slain.”

“Well?” asked Alexander, “What has Śaśigupta done?”

“He has apparently surrendered, O King of Kings. His precise words were: my army has deserted me. I have been told that I have been spared so far on account of all that I have done for them before, but that I too will be slain, should I continue to co-operate with the Greeks. I fear, O King of Kings, that we have lost control of the entire territory … ”

Cāṇakya!

After all those years, of hearing her father complain jealously about the prosperity of the Gandhāras, cursing them as the wicked, traitorous Śakunis.

It was common among girls to whisper, among themselves, that they would only ever marry a boy educated at Takṣaśilā – never in public, of course, should their fantasies offend their real future suitors in – to be infatuated with these Takṣaśilā boys, who ruled the courtyards of the university, bullying each other in aggressive debate, who were the best in all they did, who were told, at their very initiations: Familiarize yourselves with one another, because it is you all, seated in this hall today, who will be ruling the world eighteen years from now.

And now her attendant had just told her, on half a half-hour’s notice, to beautify and present herself at the royal court, as she was to wed Cāṇakya – that mysterious young upstart, the Śakuni among those Śakunis!

Her heart racing, Yaśomatī lifted the veil, opened her eyes, and finding Cāṇakya’s far stoicer ones, carefully moderated her own expression to match his.

“ … ”

“ … ”

“ … ”

“ … ”

“Ārya,” she said in a voice soft and feminine, “It is an honour to meet you.”

Cāṇakya nodded simply. “It is. But I have no fondness for flattery, and there is much of importance that we must speak about.”

The princess was petrified.

“Many maidens have romantic daydreams about their wedding and subsequent marital life,” said the Professor. “Are you afflicted with such a disorder?”

“ … ”

“What have you done, Professor!”

King Āmbhi had listened.

When Cāṇakya had stated his bizarre plan to cause his own prince to rebel against him, King Āmbhi had listened; when Cāṇakya had instructed him to send risky letters to the Persians, King Āmbhi had listened; when Cāṇakya had requested that he agreed to share the liberated Kamboja territory with a certain Queen Kṛpā, he had listened; when Cāṇakya had advised an unconditional surrender to the Greeks, King Āmbhi had listened, and when Cāṇakya had asked him to ignore certain anti-Greek activities underway in his country, King Āmbhi had listened.

But to be asked to join hands in friendship with Puruṣottama – Gandhāra’s rival for generations – was simply audacious.

“Professor Cāṇakya. My family and his have a historic enmity. What have you done?”

“Removed that historic rivalry,” stated Cāṇakya.

“Because it was an impediment to your plans?”

“Yes. And once I am through with my plans, both you and King Puruṣottama will be great beneficiaries.”

“ … ”

“ … ”

“… what are your plans, Professor?”

“Revealing my plans carelessly will not help me advance them. But you are an honest and competent man, as is King Puruṣottama, and I do not betray my word to honest and competent men. I request you to trust my intellect.”

Giving a regal acknowledgement to the announcement of his epithets by his bards and beaming at his two greatest Indian allies – Āmbhi and Puruṣottama – the Greek king announced:

“This is a historic moment indeed – the union of two ancient enemies in alliance, defying the prophecies of advisors and seers alike, a feat that could be achieved by none but the son of Zeus!”

Despite his great outwardly pronouncements, the conqueror of the world

But even the great Alexander – who possessed so many accomplishments to his name – felt the slightest pang of insecurity, for he had heard rumour, that the alliance he had wished to take credit for was not truly his work, but that of a certain mysterious Maurya. Who was this Maurya – what were his motivations – and what means did he use for such persuasion? Certainly, Puruṣottama and Āmbhi swore that they had not spoken to any such Maurya, and that they were entering this alliance by their own volition – and these stories about Maurya (it was a seal, apparently? – bearing the icon of the peacock, that bird Alexander had learned of in Babylon – and the word itself meant “of the peacock”?) and the nature of his intervention were so vague and miraculous, it hardly appeared sane for Alexander to give it care, as god-fearing as he was.

And then, far more pressing,

Somewhere far removed from the site where this alliance was being forged, another alliance – more sacred and more eternal, yet linked to this one – underwent officiation.

In this barren stretch, with the Chief Minister of Puruṣottama’s as the only guest so as to maintain secrecy from the rest of the world – a man and a woman, Cāṇakya and Yaśomatī, circumambulated the holy fire.